Space Odyssey from Abandoned Mining Space Station

Chapter 1328: Chapter 370: Borrowed Use (2)

Of course, if a fight needs to be fought, it still has to be fought, and the necessary tests definitely still have to be done.

Anyway, he was as unafraid of losses as ever; he simply saw no need to accept meaningless ones.

So if it really came to follow-up battles, Chen Ming’s plan was to deploy only Insect Race troops.

Although the Scavenger seemed like it could go toe-to-toe with that monster, Chen Ming’s thinking was the same as before—he had no intention of sending it onto the battlefield.

The value of what it possessed was far higher than the value of its participation in combat.

And the Scavenger wasn’t a Spiritual Mechanism either; for battles where Spiritual Energy was in play, he’d still have to rely on the Insect Race, who likewise possessed Spiritual Power.

In fact, Chen Ming had a new idea.

It was a purely size-stacking concept for Manufacturing new Insect Race units.

It was just that its feasibility, rationality, and whether a creature of that size could have a physiologically strong enough structure were all issues that couldn’t be solved in a short time.

He could try experimenting with it later.

For now, he’d just obediently summon over the Insect Race’s Main Ship, the Hercules-A.

And for the scale of this probing battle, a hundred Main Ships would be enough.

In his mind, Chen Ming silently tallied up a number of Main Ships that would make even the Empire’s scalp crawl.

He really did have that many Main Ships, and could in fact produce far more than that.

You could only say: this was the power of the Insect Race.

Once Chen Ming had completely mastered Main Ship technology, and mastered the technology for letting the Insect Race Manufacture Main Ships, no one would ever again be able to threaten him—no one, no matter who they were.

After all, no one knew how many Insect Race nests were desperately expanding in the endless universe.

No one knew how many Insect Race Fleets were standing behind Chen Ming.

Anyway, just from the number of Insect Race Cruisers that had appeared before, it was obvious it wouldn’t be a small figure.

Chen Ming knew that over on the Empire’s side there had apparently been several discussions about him—more precisely, about him and An Wuping.

After all, the Empire had many ways to deal with a powerful Psychic; but if a powerful Psychic’s Spiritual Energy came with an inexhaustible fleet, then the Empire had no effective means of countering that.

For that situation, the only response was early eradication.

The Empire either had to suppress Chen Ming from the very beginning, giving him no chance to grow—

Or assassinate him before he fully grew to the point of being unsolvable, that is, before he grasped the means of Manufacturing Main Ships.

In fact, back when Chen Ming had just been taken away by Dusk, the Empire already had such arrangements in place.

If Chen Ming had stayed within the Empire’s borders, then plenty of things would definitely have happened afterward.

But it just so happened that a not-quite-fully-prepared Major General, for some rather personal reasons, ended up allowing Chen Ming to leave the Empire alive, and spend his weakest and also most dangerous period over with Dusk.

That allowed Chen Ming to temporarily grow to a point where he couldn’t be easily resolved.

Later, when Chen Ming’s cooperation with Bai Quan got underway, he had Bai Quan as his guarantor, and on top of that he spent all day holed up in the lab doing research, never stepping out the door, so no one could get access to him at all.

Aside from that one infiltration by Zuo Jing using a Mind Control Psychic, no other method could touch Chen Ming.

Even if they did make contact, the one remaining at the branch wouldn’t be Chen Ming himself, but one of his avatars.

After going back and forth like this, the number of people who knew Chen Ming grew, his capabilities kept improving, and the difficulty of moving against him increased steadily.

Gradually, Chen Ming finally no longer needed a physical body to survive, but existed through consciousness instead.

And the moment when Chen Ming captured the Mechanical Race’s Mother Ship was actually the last chance to kill him.

As long as someone could realize that Chen Ming and An Wuping were the same person, then by eliminating all avatars including Chen Ming and An Wuping, wiping out all Insect Race forces that still left some trace, killing the Insect Queen, and conveniently wiping out all Mechanical Race units under Chen Ming’s control, Chen Ming would of course die.

Yet no one managed to seize that opportunity; they could only watch as Chen Ming continued to grow.

By now, Chen Ming and An Wuping—so tightly bound to the Insect Race nest—had combat strength that could very well overturn the Empire’s regime on their own.

The Empire no longer had any chance to change that situation.

All of this was something Chen Ming himself had figured out.

He just didn’t make any response, and couldn’t be bothered to have An Wuping respond either.

But over on the Empire’s side, someone smart seemed to have finally thought through this layer. That Minister Lu Han of the Spiritual Ability Population Management Department, who’d previously clashed with An Wuping, apparently resigned.

Incidentally, Chen Ming also saw that the outdated webpage of the Spiritual Ability Population Census Network had been rebuilt and optimized into a site with a much more pleasant interactive interface.

That counted as something worth celebrating.

It successfully eased the feeling of disgust Chen Ming had when he first used that site and was offended by its crude page.

In any case, regarding Chen Ming’s later affairs, the Empire had not the slightest objection.

Chen Ming also continued interacting with the Empire in this current, arguably very strange, manner.

As long as no one came looking for trouble, as long as no one tried to disgust him, he had no intention of changing the status quo.

He’d never thought of himself as some genius who could excel at anything; at most, he could only do well in things he liked and was interested in.

If he were really so full and idle that he’d go stir up something like overthrowing the Empire and playing “the emperor’s seat rotates from person to person,” he honestly didn’t have that kind of free time.

Besides, although the Human Empire was called an Empire, it wasn’t actually an autocracy, but a somewhat abstract form of democratic system.